Welcome to Track IIPhilosophy of Information and Cognition

Orlin Vakarelov: Pre-cognitive Sematic Information

Marcin Schroeder: Semantics of Information: Meaning and Truth as Relationships between Information Carriers

Francisco Hernandez Quiroz: Computational and Human Mind Model

Today’s session

10:15 – joint with track III Alexander Funcke: On the Level of Creativity.

Ponderings on the Nature of Kantian Categories, Creativity and Copyrights

Lars-Erik Janlert: The Dynaminsm of Information Access for a Mobile Agent in a Dynamic Setting and some of its Implications

Iordanis Kavathatzopoulos and Mikael Laaksoharju: What are Ethical Agents and How Can We a Make Them Work Properly?

Wednesday two sessions

12:45 Richard Heersmink: Epistemological and

Phenomenological Issues in the Use of Brain-Computer Interfaces

Kirsty Kitto: Contextual Information: Modeling Different Interpretations of the same Data within a Geometric Framework

Christophe Menant: Cognition as a Management of Meaningful Information: Proposal for an Evolutionary Approach

Wednesday two sessions

Pre-cognitive Semantic Information

Orlin VakarelovDepartment of Philosophy

Cognitive Science ProgramUniversity of Arizona

Analyze cognition with the notion of sematic information

Project

Requirement Formulate a notion of semantic information

that does not presuppose cognition or mind as the source of the semantics.

USE

MEANING

Information = data + meaning (+ veridicality)

Use of information requires sensitivity to meaning.◦ Pragmatic Information = data + meaning + use

(+..) Amendment interpretation

Canonical View

DATA

Prototypical examples of data systems: languages, files, maps, diagrams …◦ All of these presuppose advanced

cognition

Natural Data: tree rings, smoke …◦ None of these count as data unless a

level of abstraction is specified.◦ Specification of a level of abstraction

seems to require cognition.

When can data be specified first?

“It is snowing in Aarhus”

Pragmatic approach◦ The basic concept is information system◦ Information is “currency” of the information

system

Decomposition interpretation◦ The “components” of pragmatic information are

co-determined in the operation of the information system

◦ “+” in “Information = data + meaning + use” results from decomposition.

An Alternative Approach

Pragmatic Scenario

Input Output

Internal Processes

Control relations

Mediation

I is an information system (Doede Nauta 1970) iff:1. I is an open system, i.e., it is a system that is distinct from its

environment, but it is in constant interaction with the environment.

2. I is a partially isolated open system, i.e., some of the interactions between S and the environment are structured through well-defined limited channels of influence (receptors and effectors).

3. I is a purposeful system, i.e., there is at least one proper set of goal states, G , that the system “attempts” to be in (or near) by affecting its environment.

4. I contains a sub-system M that can correlate with an external system S, and M can control the behavior of I by modulating effectors E.

5. I contains a second distinct sub-system P that filters the states of M and their effect on behavior in relating to its purpose. In other words, P steers the system towards G by modulating the control effect of M.

Information system

Conditions 1 - 4E

MS

Source Model/Map

Effectors

Purposeful filter

• Goal state (or neighborhood) G

• Mechanism P that selects the response based on a likelihood or effectiveness to achieve G

• More than one effective response to a given state of M

In a purposeful system there is a functional decoupling between the sub-system M and the control function of M

Yet, there is a control relationship between M and E.

M can be described as an informational medium used by the system in its interaction with the world.

The medium

What is the significance of the states of M for the information system?

Externalist approach:◦ “Semantic information is material information

with a functional business determined by teleology.” (Bogdan 1988: 89)

Internalist approach:◦ “The meaning of a message can be defined very

simply as its selective function on the range of the recipient's states of conditional readiness for goal-directed activity.” (MacKay 1969: 24)

Meaning

The meaning of an information state m of an information system is given by the differential interface function it serves in the whole process of purposeful interaction between the information system and the environment.

This is a minimal theory of meaning. Meaning has both an internalist and externalis

components and it may reduce to an internalist or externalist theory depending on how flexible the sides of the interface relation are.

Interface Theory of Meaning